His half-baked proposal on maternity leave only applies to women who have given birth. This proposal, like his whole campaign, leaves out an entire swath of people in America who don’t fit his narrow version of what makes a family. It doesn’t respect the needs of fathers, or adoptive or fostering parents, and continues the myth of a 1950s world where women take care of children and men work.
Now, he has a proposal that could make birth control more expensive for millions of women and even eliminate access to some types of long-acting birth control, like IUDs. This is not a solution. Donald Trump is really saying that he wants more than 55 million women to lose coverage for no-copay birth control, which could put it financially out of reach for many.
The reality is that Donald Trump has not only spent his entire career dismissing and insulting women — going so far as to call women pigs and dogs — he has also spent the last 15 months promising policies that endanger and harm them. He’s promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which gives women access to no-copay birth control, saving them an estimated $1.4 billion a year. And he’s promised to appoint anti-abortion Supreme Court justices in hopes of overturning Roe v. Wade, striking women’s constitutional right to abortion. He’s also promised to block patients who rely on public health programs from going to Planned Parenthood health centers — where an estimated 1 in 5 American women have come for care.